In recent years, along with the miniaturization of a semiconductor device, a method capable of performing fine etching, which is called a chemical oxide removal (COR) process, is used instead of the conventional etching technique such as dry etching or wet etching.
The COR process is a process that generates a product within a processing container kept at vacuum by, for example, supplying a process gas to a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter referred to as a “wafer”) as an object to be processed and causing the process gas to react with a film formed on the wafer. The product generated on a wafer surface by the COR process is sublimated by subjecting the product to heating at a subsequent step. Thus, the film on the wafer surface is removed.
The COR process is performed by a single-wafer-type processing apparatus which processes a wafer one by one. In recent years, for the purpose of enhancing the throughput, a processing apparatus which processes a plurality of wafers at the same time is often used.
In this processing apparatus, a baffle plate which divides the interior of a processing container into a processing space and an exhaust space is installed in order to prevent a flow of a process gas from becoming non-uniform on the surfaces of a plurality of, e.g., two, wafers.
However, a demand for the uniformity of wafer processing grows strict in recent years. In the aforementioned processing apparatus which processes a plurality of wafers at the same time, it is difficult to secure the uniformity of a process gas on the respective wafer surfaces.
Furthermore, in the processing apparatus which processes a plurality of wafers at the same time, there is a request for parallel processing of the respective wafers with independent recipes. It is also desired to form independent processing spaces for the respective wafers.